Hi, @MarkML,
Thanks for the comments. In fact, over the last couple of days, I got the issue solved, and can now read those files just fine.
Overall, my old DELTA-reading routines have been much improved and upgraded and are now much simpler. and faster than the previous versions. Anyway, they are adequate for my immediate purposes.
The help of all you guys here was much appreciated and, indeed, was pretty essential in the improvement of those routines.
Thank you very much!